GOTTI NOT GUILTY ON ALL 6 CHARGES IN ASSAULT TRIAL

By SELWYN RAAB

Published: February 10, 1990

John Gotti, who has been described as an icon of the underworld and the nation's top Mafia boss, was pronounced not guilty of assault and conspiracy charges in State Supreme Court in Manhattan yesterday.

For Mr. Gotti, who stared tranquilly at the jury as he heard the verdict, it was the third courtroom victory since 1986, the year that the authorities say he became the head of the Gambino crime family.

After hearing the verdict, law-enforcement officials conceded glumly that the acquittals would magnify Mr. Gotti's reputation for legal invincibility and his status as an impregnable leader of organized crime.

'Nice Job'

Without a glimmer of emotion, his shoulders ramrod straight, Mr. Gotti sat listening as the jury foreman said, ''not guilty'' to four separate charges of assault and two of conspiracy. After the foreman announced that Mr. Gotti's co-defendant, Anthony (Tony Lee) Guerrieri, also was acquitted of the same charges and the jurors had left the courtroom, Mr. Gotti rose from his seat to hug his lawyers and Mr. Guerrieri and kiss them on the cheeks.

''Nice job,'' Mr. Gotti said to his chief counsel, Bruce Cutler.

Soon after, he was rushed from the courthouse at 111 Centre Street and driven in a maroon Cadillac to his main meeting place in Manhattan, the Ravenite social club at 247 Mulberry Street. He was cheered by people in the streets of Little Italy. Thirteen months before and only a few blocks north in SoHo he told an arresting officer, ''Three to one I beat this charge.''

Jury Took Only One Vote

Outside the courtroom, jurors said they had taken only one vote to reach a verdict to acquit the 49-year-old Mr. Gotti of charges he ordered the shooting and wounding of a Manhattan carpenters' union official, John F. O'Connor, in 1986.

Five jurors who agreed to be interviewed said the panel had found little credibility in the prosecution's two main elements: tapes of secretly recorded conversations of Mr. Gotti and the principal witness, James P. McElroy, an admitted murderer and perjurer and an ''enforcer'' for the Westies, a Hell's Kitchen gang.

Several of the jurors, who were sequestered throughout the trial, and who were not required during jury selection to give their full names, also said the tapes were of poor sound quality and difficult to hear.

''Sometimes, I couldn't hear,'' said Richard Silensky, a 41-year-old aspiring actor who works in the mail room at The New York Times. ''Some things I heard on my own that weren't in the transcripts,'' said Mr. Silensky, the only juror who agreed yesterday to be identified by name.

The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, whose office brought the case, said, ''I'm disappointed but I think it was a fair trial.''

''We always recognized that this was a case where you have to rely on electronically recorded conversations and confederates who are not the cream of society,'' Mr. Morgenthau said. ''We knew it wouldn't be easy, but we also thought it was substanial.'' Defense lawyers, who tried to put the prosecution on trial by claiming that Mr. Gotti was being framed by ambitious prosecutors, were exultant.

''The jury was able to see through a created case,'' said Mr. Cutler, who had represented Mr. Gotti in acquittals on Federal racketeering charges in Brooklyn in 1987 and state assault and robbery charge in Queens in 1986.

The prosecution had put great stake in one tape in which Mr. Gotti was purported to have said, ''We're gonna, gonna bust him up.'' Prosecutors maintained that statement was a directive by Mr. Gotti to associates for an assault on Mr. O'Connor in the wake of a labor dispute at a restaurant owned by a Gambino family member.

'Leave Him Alone'

Mr. Silensky said the ''bust him up'' phrase was unconvincing.

''There are other tapes after that that say, 'Leave him alone,' '' Mr. Silensky said.

Another male juror, who asked for anonymity, said he could not understand the tape. ''I don't know if it meant 'bust the union up,' 'bust him up' or 'bust 'em up,' '' he said.

Describing the same tape, a female juror said: ''You couldn't take anything in that tape by itself. You have to place it in context. There has to be a flow that leads somewhere.''

Another female juror, who asked not to be identified, said none of the jurors found Mr. McElroy persuasive.

''McElroy to me was not credible,'' she said in an interview at the Loews Summit Hotel on the East Side, where the jurors had been sequestered. ''I simply did not know what the truth was with this person: a drug addict, a killer.''

On Thursday and yesterday morning, the jurors had most of Mr. McElrory's testimony read back to them. The only witness to link Mr. Gotti to the shooting, Mr. McElroy testified that Mr. Gotti had contracted the assault on Mr. O'Connor to the Westies.

'Reasonable Doubt'

''The Westies were undisciplined,'' a male juror said, referring to testimony at the trial. ''They were wild. They did n't need anybody's permission to kill anybody.''

A male juror, who identified himself as an insurance underwriter, said, ''There was nothing to connect Mr. Gotti with what happened - zilch.''

Mr. Silensky added: ''I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm just saying I had my doubts, and basically we all agreed that we all had a reasonable doubt.''